For those familiar with PubMed
It's the 'See more...' link below the rectangular box on the right, once you've done a search - click that and then select the 'URL' button that appears below the box on the new page.
New readers start here
When you run a very basic search on PubMed (eg literally just typing aspartame insulin) the URL of the page changes from
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed to
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=aspartame+insulin
If you then add a filter (look on the left hand side for the 'species' filter) so that you're only looking at results of studies done in humans then the URL returns to
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
which is a bit disheartening if you want to email it to someone and say 'hey look what I found'.
There is a way round that but I think that, in most cases (within reason), the URL of the page should reflect what the page is doing (except where you've had to log in of course). Mind you if I'd been in charge of this from the start we'd have never had frames.
First catch your URL
Have a look at the right hand side of the page (you might have to scroll down a bit) for the 'Search details' box where you can see how PubMed has converted your typed in search words into a properly built search. Below the box (on the right) is a 'See more...' link - click it.
You're now on the 'Search details' page, there's another box and below it are two buttons one of which says 'URL' - click that and you'll be taken to a page of search results. At the top of the page, where the web address / URL is (ie the address bar) is a plain text version of the URL which has spaces in it and doesn't look that URL-y. However once you click on it and copy it, and paste it anywhere else it should automatically fill in the spaces and even if it doesn't, when pasted into a browser it will work as a web address and take you to a copy of those search results.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%28%28%22aspartame%22[MeSH%20Terms]%20OR%20%22aspartame%22[All%20Fields]%29%20AND%20%28%22insulin%22[MeSH%20Terms]%20OR%20%22insulin%22[All%20Fields]%29%29%20AND%20%22humans%22[MeSH%20Terms]&cmd=DetailsSearch
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Does aspartame have any effect on insulin production?
I think there was an article in one of the tabloids recently which implied that drinking diet soda might increase weight gain - I didn't pay too much attention to it to be honest as I assumed that it would simply be down to larger people offsetting a few calories with a low calorie drink.
But then a pal asked if I knew of anything in the literature that looks at the effect of aspartame on insulin production (I think in people with diabetes rather than the general population). I didn't.
Since I've not been working at Diabetes UK for almost a year and no longer do literature reviews and whatnot I'm perhaps a bit rusty, so feel free to join in and help us out :)
I did a very basic search on PubMed at http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez so that it was only searching within papers that were reporting on work done in humans. Undoubtedly there will be umpteen million papers claiming doom and gloom about aspartame, based on work done in mice. That's not to discount that work and it may well be useful in pointing to interesting things to study, it's just I would avoid rushing to conclusions based on that.
And to be honest I'd avoid rushing to any conclusions anywhere along the line in this process.
So... I wanted to search for insulin aspartame (where these words appear in the title, keywords or abstract etc) and I wanted to filter the results so that only those articles relating to human were returned.
This scary long URL might do the trick http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%28%28%22aspartame%22[MeSH%20Terms]%20OR%20%22aspartame%22[All%20Fields]%29%20AND%20%28%22insulin%22[MeSH%20Terms]%20OR%20%22insulin%22[All%20Fields]%29%29%20AND%20%22humans%22[MeSH%20Terms]&cmd=DetailsSearch
Clicking on that will bring up 39 (at time of writing) abstracts and it will also populate the search box with the search terms, so these can be tweaked to suit.
Things I would look out for might include - teeny tiny studies where only a handful of people were involved, studies where the people didn't have diabetes or were unusual in their diabetes (newly diagnosed or perhaps people with Type 2 not yet on any medication etc), studies in people who consume an abnormally large volume of unsugared soft drinks and who also use other unsugared products heavily. Also see if any studies specifically mention insulin secretion or changes in insulin production and how this is measured.
That might be a place to start.
But then a pal asked if I knew of anything in the literature that looks at the effect of aspartame on insulin production (I think in people with diabetes rather than the general population). I didn't.
Since I've not been working at Diabetes UK for almost a year and no longer do literature reviews and whatnot I'm perhaps a bit rusty, so feel free to join in and help us out :)
I did a very basic search on PubMed at http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez so that it was only searching within papers that were reporting on work done in humans. Undoubtedly there will be umpteen million papers claiming doom and gloom about aspartame, based on work done in mice. That's not to discount that work and it may well be useful in pointing to interesting things to study, it's just I would avoid rushing to conclusions based on that.
And to be honest I'd avoid rushing to any conclusions anywhere along the line in this process.
So... I wanted to search for insulin aspartame (where these words appear in the title, keywords or abstract etc) and I wanted to filter the results so that only those articles relating to human were returned.
This scary long URL might do the trick http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%28%28%22aspartame%22[MeSH%20Terms]%20OR%20%22aspartame%22[All%20Fields]%29%20AND%20%28%22insulin%22[MeSH%20Terms]%20OR%20%22insulin%22[All%20Fields]%29%29%20AND%20%22humans%22[MeSH%20Terms]&cmd=DetailsSearch
Clicking on that will bring up 39 (at time of writing) abstracts and it will also populate the search box with the search terms, so these can be tweaked to suit.
Things I would look out for might include - teeny tiny studies where only a handful of people were involved, studies where the people didn't have diabetes or were unusual in their diabetes (newly diagnosed or perhaps people with Type 2 not yet on any medication etc), studies in people who consume an abnormally large volume of unsugared soft drinks and who also use other unsugared products heavily. Also see if any studies specifically mention insulin secretion or changes in insulin production and how this is measured.
That might be a place to start.
I wish PDFs had a 'make single column' button...
Edit: 19 July 2021 - solved
Use MS Word to open the PDF, then select all the text and choose Layout > Columns > Single column. Hurrah.
----------------
...to save scrolling down one side of the page, scrolling up again and then scrolling back down the other side. Sometimes I do copy and paste the text into something else and sort that out myself but maybe Adobe could put this in one of their many, many, many updates.
Edit 14 March 2014 - potentially solved! If you have Adobe Reader X (which apparently I do, as it sort of worked) open your two column PDF, press Ctrl+4 [not the numeric keypad 4 but the one below the $ symbol] and wait patiently while the file is shoogled into a single column format. Amazing!
The downside is that success is very dependent on the quality of the formatting of the PDF - and since most PDFs are presumably not intended to be read in this way results might be a bit hit and miss. The example PDF below renders like this, ie a bit Latin withallthewordshavingnospaces between them. I can read it OK but goodness knows why anyone ever wants to have double columns in a PDF in the first place.
Original post
Here's what I have (click to enlarge)...
...here's what I want
I made this myself in Paint on my PC but I can't keep doing that ;)
The paper shown is Blandford, A., Cauchi, A., Curzon, P., Eslambolchilar, P., Furniss, D., Gimblett, A., Huang, H., Lee, P., Li, Y., Masci, P., Oladimeji, P., Rajkomar, A., Rukšėnas, R., & Thimbleby, H. (2011). Comparing actual practice and user manuals: A case study based on programmable infusion pumps. Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems for Medicine and Health Care (EICS4Med), 59–64.
Monday, 18 February 2013
How to make sequential numbers appear in Excel
Index
1. How to make sequential numbers appear in Excel
2. How to get rid of R1C1 (row one column one) references and return it to cell E3 etc
I am using Microsoft Office (Professional Plus) 2010, at work.
1. How to make sequential numbers appear in Excel
I have often wondered how people manage to do this and today I found out - it's pretty easy. The instructions can be found from Microsoft's online help pages but I've added pretty pictures below.
Here's some nice music, from Patience and Prudence to accompany things (most recently used in an advert about flying on aeroplanes).
1. Type a couple of examples of the sequence of numbers you want - it seems to assume if you type 1 and then 2 that the next number in the sequence will be 3. I've not tried 2,4,6 but I assume it can handle that too.
2. Tell Excel where the source examples are for your number sequence, ie highlight the two cells with your numbers in them. The little white cross cursor doesn't show up when I took the screenshot but I managed to find one online and added it in myself.
3. Move the cursor so it's touching the highlighted cells and it will change to this black cross form (again it didn't show up in screenshot so I've had to add it in, thanks to this site).
Get ready to click and drag downwards...
4. The picture on the left shows what happens when you click and drag the cursor, and on the right it shows what happens when you let go - it fills up with numbers.
You can extend this by doing the same process on numbers 17 and 18 (in cells A18 and A19) to tell it what the sequence is going to be and then dragging further downwards.
2. How to get rid of R1C1 (row one column one) references and return it to cell E3 etc
File / Options / Formulas
De-tick R1C1 reference style, OK
Other search terms: how to make a line of numbers appear, how to make a column of numbers, how to number a list,
1. How to make sequential numbers appear in Excel
2. How to get rid of R1C1 (row one column one) references and return it to cell E3 etc
I am using Microsoft Office (Professional Plus) 2010, at work.
1. How to make sequential numbers appear in Excel
I have often wondered how people manage to do this and today I found out - it's pretty easy. The instructions can be found from Microsoft's online help pages but I've added pretty pictures below.
Here's some nice music, from Patience and Prudence to accompany things (most recently used in an advert about flying on aeroplanes).
Get ready to click and drag downwards...
You can extend this by doing the same process on numbers 17 and 18 (in cells A18 and A19) to tell it what the sequence is going to be and then dragging further downwards.
2. How to get rid of R1C1 (row one column one) references and return it to cell E3 etc
File / Options / Formulas
De-tick R1C1 reference style, OK
Other search terms: how to make a line of numbers appear, how to make a column of numbers, how to number a list,
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
How to back up or download your blog that is hosted on free sites eg Blogger
Short version: get hold of a copy of the XML file for your blog. This contains all of the information (posts, site hierarchy, comments) in one convenient web file that can be used to relaunch your blog in case of disaster.
This post is for people like me, who have their blog hosted on sites like Blogger, Wordpress.com or Posterous. I've no idea about setting up, or backing up, a self-hosted blog (where you interact with a server). If someone who knows more about that fancies contributing a few lines for me to add here... that would be nice.
Things you can do now while your blog is still up and running
Remember, backing up your blog isn't a one-time thing but something you might want to do every few days or weeks (depending on how frequently you blog). Probably there's some way to automate this process but if there is, I don't know it.
1. Backing up your blog
Blogger (Google)
To download blog, click on the 'Design' icon at the top of your blog (being logged in) and then click on the Settings | Other menu, then click "Export Blog" and choose the Download option. You will then be saving an .xml file which you can keep safe until you need to import it into another blog host.
From http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=97416
Posterous
http://posterous.com/#backup - then click on the Request Backup button for your blog(s).
WordPress
Go to your blog(s)' site admin area (stick /wp-admin/ after the end of your blog's address).
In the menu on the left click on Tools | Export and choose the free option which gives you an xml file
Tumblr
I am less familiar with this one so have taken advice from Google but it seems that the following option may help:
• HTTrack (this will back up any website to be honest, I use it for other purposes)
• See also all Tumblr posts tagged with Tumblr backup
2. Mirroring your blog while it's still up and running
I have a copy of this very blog at Blogger.com over at Wordpress.com though it's private as it's confusing to have two copies of the same information, I also have the xml files of blogs I'd be annoyed to lose.
You can mirror your blog in two ways I think.
(1) Authorise the two blog hosts to talk to each other and let the software do the importing for you
(2) Import a blog using your xml file (obviously this ought to work whether or not your original blog is up and running or suspended).
Importing into Wordpress from another site
• Create account and new blog to house your content
• Stick /wp-admin/import.php on the end of your blog's address to go to the admin / import site (or use Tools | Import) - you can choose to import from several different blogging platforms including Blogger, Posterous or Tumblr.
• You'll then be asked to authorise Wordpress to interact with your original blog and you can then import the posts.
Importing into Blogger from another site (not sure if this will work)
Not sure if this will work using the xml setting as it says 'import from a Blogger xml' rather than just any old xml - I can't see how one xml differs from any other but 'more research needed'. Apparently there is a Wordpress to Blogger conversion tool if your 'another site' is Wordpress.
• Create an account and set up a new blog at http://www.blogger.com/home.
• If doing so takes you to a different page, go back to the link above (home)
• To the right of your new blog is an orange pencil symbol (create new post) a couple of other icons and a 'view blog' icon. Click on the small down arrow between them to bring up the options, choose Settings | Other and then Import blog from the options along the top
• Upload your xml file and hope for the best.
See also Blogger's own advice on importing and exporting blogs (also mentioned above).
Recovering your posts when it's a bit late for the above
1. Stick your blog's URL into Google and capture what you can from Google's cache. You can also remove the http:// bit and replace it with cache: to do this.
The result will be pages of search results and so will involve quite a bit of labour in capturing them all, you can use 'File / Save page as...' to save them to your hard drive.
Edit: Alan Heness has suggested the following, accessed by using a Web Cache extension for the Chrome browser. Some of these I confess I've never heard of :)
2. Once on a cached page make note of any table of contents or archives for each month. Google will return your blog's posts in no particular order making it difficult to know if you've got everything. It's much easier to know what you're searching for and you can also get hold of a cached copy of your month by month archives - the purpose of this is to bring up a page with the title and links of your posts for that month. The links themselves won't work if your blog is down but, again, stick cache: in front of them to see if you can grab a cached copy from Google.
3. Use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to find older posts if Google cache doesn't have them. Note also that Google Cache might not have very recently published posts.
Background
This post arose after a few posts and entire blogs I enjoy reading were apparently taken down including the Retraction Watch website (see also ArsTechnica on the story), the 21st Floor and Josephine Jones' blog (the latter turned out to be a glitch, I've done it myself when importing my blog to Wordpress - I triggered their spam warning and had to ask them to restore it, which they did within a couple of hours although it looks like someone is keen to see it taken down [copy]).
In the case of Retraction Watch (RW) a seemingly mistaken DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 'takedown' request was made to the organisation hosting RW's blog (Wordpress) stating that RW had posted material that belonged to someone else. Nonsense as this may be it seems that the effect of DMCA takedowns are more like 'shoot first, ask questions later'. Similarly blogs can be terminated for violation of terms of service.
Sometimes blogs get it wrong and post stuff that isn't theirs to post, so fair enough, other times it's just a blunt tool to remove perfectly valid but perhaps inconvenient information.
Chilling Effects is a site where people can upload their DMCA notices - the site is collecting and commenting on them (not all are unreasonable). They also have an online DMCA counter claim if you believe your material has been removed in error.
Be careful about putting in a claim or counter-claim - you may be committing a crime if you're wrong.
If you spot any mistakes or omissions in methods listed above please let me know, thanks.
This post is for people like me, who have their blog hosted on sites like Blogger, Wordpress.com or Posterous. I've no idea about setting up, or backing up, a self-hosted blog (where you interact with a server). If someone who knows more about that fancies contributing a few lines for me to add here... that would be nice.
Things you can do now while your blog is still up and running
Remember, backing up your blog isn't a one-time thing but something you might want to do every few days or weeks (depending on how frequently you blog). Probably there's some way to automate this process but if there is, I don't know it.
1. Backing up your blog
Blogger (Google)
To download blog, click on the 'Design' icon at the top of your blog (being logged in) and then click on the Settings | Other menu, then click "Export Blog" and choose the Download option. You will then be saving an .xml file which you can keep safe until you need to import it into another blog host.
From http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=97416
Posterous
http://posterous.com/#backup - then click on the Request Backup button for your blog(s).
WordPress
Go to your blog(s)' site admin area (stick /wp-admin/ after the end of your blog's address).
In the menu on the left click on Tools | Export and choose the free option which gives you an xml file
Tumblr
I am less familiar with this one so have taken advice from Google but it seems that the following option may help:
• HTTrack (this will back up any website to be honest, I use it for other purposes)
• See also all Tumblr posts tagged with Tumblr backup
2. Mirroring your blog while it's still up and running
I have a copy of this very blog at Blogger.com over at Wordpress.com though it's private as it's confusing to have two copies of the same information, I also have the xml files of blogs I'd be annoyed to lose.
You can mirror your blog in two ways I think.
(1) Authorise the two blog hosts to talk to each other and let the software do the importing for you
(2) Import a blog using your xml file (obviously this ought to work whether or not your original blog is up and running or suspended).
Importing into Wordpress from another site
• Create account and new blog to house your content
• Stick /wp-admin/import.php on the end of your blog's address to go to the admin / import site (or use Tools | Import) - you can choose to import from several different blogging platforms including Blogger, Posterous or Tumblr.
• You'll then be asked to authorise Wordpress to interact with your original blog and you can then import the posts.
Importing into Blogger from another site (not sure if this will work)
Not sure if this will work using the xml setting as it says 'import from a Blogger xml' rather than just any old xml - I can't see how one xml differs from any other but 'more research needed'. Apparently there is a Wordpress to Blogger conversion tool if your 'another site' is Wordpress.
• Create an account and set up a new blog at http://www.blogger.com/home.
• If doing so takes you to a different page, go back to the link above (home)
• To the right of your new blog is an orange pencil symbol (create new post) a couple of other icons and a 'view blog' icon. Click on the small down arrow between them to bring up the options, choose Settings | Other and then Import blog from the options along the top
• Upload your xml file and hope for the best.
See also Blogger's own advice on importing and exporting blogs (also mentioned above).
Recovering your posts when it's a bit late for the above
1. Stick your blog's URL into Google and capture what you can from Google's cache. You can also remove the http:// bit and replace it with cache: to do this.
The result will be pages of search results and so will involve quite a bit of labour in capturing them all, you can use 'File / Save page as...' to save them to your hard drive.
Edit: Alan Heness has suggested the following, accessed by using a Web Cache extension for the Chrome browser. Some of these I confess I've never heard of :)
Google's cache
Yahoo's cache
Bing's cache
CoralCDN
WebCite
GigaBlast
Wayback Machine 2. Once on a cached page make note of any table of contents or archives for each month. Google will return your blog's posts in no particular order making it difficult to know if you've got everything. It's much easier to know what you're searching for and you can also get hold of a cached copy of your month by month archives - the purpose of this is to bring up a page with the title and links of your posts for that month. The links themselves won't work if your blog is down but, again, stick cache: in front of them to see if you can grab a cached copy from Google.
3. Use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to find older posts if Google cache doesn't have them. Note also that Google Cache might not have very recently published posts.
Background
This post arose after a few posts and entire blogs I enjoy reading were apparently taken down including the Retraction Watch website (see also ArsTechnica on the story), the 21st Floor and Josephine Jones' blog (the latter turned out to be a glitch, I've done it myself when importing my blog to Wordpress - I triggered their spam warning and had to ask them to restore it, which they did within a couple of hours although it looks like someone is keen to see it taken down [copy]).
In the case of Retraction Watch (RW) a seemingly mistaken DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 'takedown' request was made to the organisation hosting RW's blog (Wordpress) stating that RW had posted material that belonged to someone else. Nonsense as this may be it seems that the effect of DMCA takedowns are more like 'shoot first, ask questions later'. Similarly blogs can be terminated for violation of terms of service.
Sometimes blogs get it wrong and post stuff that isn't theirs to post, so fair enough, other times it's just a blunt tool to remove perfectly valid but perhaps inconvenient information.
Chilling Effects is a site where people can upload their DMCA notices - the site is collecting and commenting on them (not all are unreasonable). They also have an online DMCA counter claim if you believe your material has been removed in error.
Be careful about putting in a claim or counter-claim - you may be committing a crime if you're wrong.
If you spot any mistakes or omissions in methods listed above please let me know, thanks.
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